Seed Production of Vegetable, Tuber and Spice Crops (2+1)

Problems in seed industry

• A large chunk of vegetable seed business is being handled by the unorganized seed sector, wherein seed traders directly purchase from growers and distribute with various trade names. There are few reputed and well established seed companies, which have their own R&D programmes for crop improvement and in-house seed quality assurance. These companies produce their own seeds as well as they import seeds from their foreign collaborators and market them in India.
  
• Control on production and marketing of vegetable seeds of private sector is limited particularly because of multiplicity of seed traders and a mushrooming growth of small local seed companies.
  
• With an ever increasing demand for good quality seed to increase the vegetable production, there is a shift towards development of hybrids and hybrid seeds. So far, very limited number of vegetable hybrids have been developed and released by public and private sectors. The majority of existing promising hybrids are from private sectors. At present, there are 54 public sector vegetable hybrids. Certain private sector seed companies viz., Namdari seeds, Syngenta, Bejo Sheetal, Mahyco, Century, Ankur, Indo American Hybrid Seed Company, etc. have contributed tremendously in developing promising F1 hybrids. Hybrid seeds of private seed companies are most common and popular with vegetable growers despite the cost factor because of assured seed availability and enhanced productivity.
• Most of the private seed companies are concentrated in southern India especially Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh due to favorable weather conditions for production of quality F1 hybrid seeds of tomato, brinjal, chilli, cauliflower, cabbage, okra, melons, cucumber and gourds.
  
• All F1 hybrid seeds of temperate vegetables viz., late cauliflower, cabbage, garden beet, temperate carrot, radish and turnip are produced in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Khasmir.